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Internet cigar fanciers create a stink

Ben Cubby and Amy Corderoy

Cameron Reilly ... ‘‘I think the interesting thing with online is where the line is drawn between advertising and people just talking to each other.’’

WHEN the internet pioneer Cameron Reilly records his popular podcasts, ranging over topics as disparate as the media, organised religion and Napoleon Bonaparte, there is almost always a cigar smouldering somewhere close to hand.

The ever-present cigars mean Mr Reilly could now be in the sights of the federal government, which is expected today to put forward legislation banning all forms of tobacco advertising online.

"This legislation will bring restrictions on tobacco advertising on the internet into line with restrictions in other media," the Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, said.

Mr Reilly made his reputation as an irreverent social commentator and co-founder of the world's first podcasting business.

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A director of a cigar company, Mr Reilly regularly weaves tobacco-related themes into his podcasts, blog posts and messages to nearly 10,000 Twitter followers. But whether these tobacco references amount to advertising is a vexed question.

Driven away from newspapers and television by regulation, online tobacco advertising has mushroomed, with more than 1000 tobacco-themed Facebook groups available to people of all ages, plus YouTube clips and Flickr galleries produced by tobacco company employees.

Mr Reilly said he inhabited a grey area of social networking and voluntary communities that could not be compared to advertising. ''I might just like to set the scene, tell people I'm drinking a single malt whisky, smoking a Perdomo cigar - but it's not like there are ads all over my podcasts,'' he said. ''I think the interesting thing with online is where the line is drawn between advertising and people just talking to each other.''

Mr Reilly is a director of Perdomo Australia.

But Rob Donovan, a behavioural researcher at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, said in his opinion Mr Reilly's activities could be considered stealth marketing. ''If you think he is a really cool dude then you are likely to adopt the sorts of things he does, so lighting up a cigar could be one of those," he said. "And if you are neutral about him but you like what he talks about, then the cigar would become a bit more attractive.

''But if you think he is a dickhead when he lights one up you will think, 'There he goes again. What a wanker.' "

Mike Daube, chairman of the National Preventative Health Taskforce, which advised the government to tighten restrictions, said Parliament had intended to ban all tobacco advertising and tobacco companies would always try to subvert bans. "There is no cause for any promotion of a product that kills one in two regular users,'' he said. ''Every time we find a loophole we need to close it. Can you close every loophole? Maybe not, but you certainly can put a lot of clamps on.''